The Second Mrs Watson
by Quarto
Summary: We move on into the future. But the past leaves its marks on us.
1. Calling in the Consultant

John made the school run. Formerly this had been a thirty-minute, agonizing, cascades-of-tears ordeal, but today he barely got Rosie out of her anorak before she said "Bye, daddy," and toddled off without a backward glance at him towards her newest obsession. This was a toy cash register, sized for the preschool set, which could ring up and print out receipts for a variety of cans, bottles, and plastic models of food. It even made the "meep" noise that always fascinated Rosie when they actually went to the grocery store.

He grinned as he watched her set to her day's work. As all parents do, John knew that someday Rosie would grow up and leave him behind, he just hadn't realized it'd quite possibly be for a job clerking at Aldi. He was making to leave, but was ambushed by Rosie's teacher, Miss Melanie, who wanted to talk to him about how he was meant to volunteer at the Christmas fair, a conversation that seemed to carry on far longer than needed…

In which Miss Melanie kept touching his arm, and giggling, and calling him _Captain_ Watson, which he was _fairly_ sure he'd never mentioned to anybody at this school. With a start, he realized that she fancied him. She'd _googled_ him.

And she was quite possibly a bit kinky.

As delicately as he could manage, John extricated himself and went off to work. It was a surgery day, and a busy one, but so routine that it didn't occupy a lot of his mental capacity. Maybe that was why the little incident stuck in his mind. It wasn't as though anyone else hadn't flirted at him, since… since. If anything nowadays he got more direct advances than he'd done at any other point in his life. Women love a widower, which was one of those facts that you only got to learn once it did you absolutely no good at all.

But Miss Melanie (oh, for God's sake, _he_ wasn't the one in infants' school, the woman could just be called Melanie in the privacy of his own head) had a halo of tightly-curled black hair, cafe-au-lait skin, and had been wearing the sort of thin shirt where you could see a lot of her. She was really very attractive, and the first time in a long time, he could envision… asking a woman out. Taking her to dinner. Even-

John blinked, wrote yet another prescription for amoxicillin (strep season was in full swing) and went about his day.

Work ended and he retrieved his daughter, easily dodging Melanie who had twenty rambunctious children to wrangle. Rosie, who was as rambunctious as the worst of them but _much_ cuter, regaled him with all the under-five gossip and showed him today's examples of little pictures and writing. They walked home, where he made a dinner of cheese ravioli with bolognese sauce while Rosie watched an episode of "Loud Backtalking Overacting American Children Grown in a Vat by the Disney Corporation."

It probably wasn't actually called that.

Dinnertime was succeeded by bathtime and bedtime, during which for the seventy-seventh night straight he read her not one but _two_ storybooks and debated whether or not that should just become the official routine. Once again, John decided not. He liked it when Rosie asked him for the extra book. It gave him the pleasant illusion he wasn't, 100%, her serf.

Then, as always, there was that deadly long stretch between when she went to sleep and when he did. Sometimes there would be texts from Sherlock to enliven the hours but his phone wasn't cooperating tonight. John drafted yet another pitch letter to yet another literary agent, tried to watch the news, ran on the treadmill for ten minutes… and couldn't settle down at all.

"Fuck it," he mumbled, and stalked into the living room and opened up the liquor cabinet. This contained his Macallan, a bunch of dust-covered miscellaneous bottles, and, at the back, another brown liquor that he hadn't bought.

Mary was never much of a drinker but on the occasions when she would, she chose this bourbon, a high-tension, high-price, artisanally-distilled blend. It was American, and difficult for her to find in London, he knew, but he'd never asked her where she'd learned that it was her favorite. He'd never asked her a lot of things.

Now, he poured himself two fingers, neat, carried it back into the spare room which served as his study, and sat at his desk. Because he wanted to ask her something, and remembering the taste of her would make that easier. With the first sip (which he winced at, neat bourbon being sweeter than he liked), he was almost able to hear her voice.

" _Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?_ "

She stood in front of him, but she was vague, not like she was in those first desperate months when he had (sort of) thought she was actually real. But then she wrinkled her nose, cocked her head, and asked him, " _Seriously?"_

"Sorry."

"Because I would _never_ have said anything like that."

"Yeah, I know."

"There was _one_ poetry reader in this relationship and it certainly wasn't me."

"Yeah, well, you're in _my_ head now, I get to make you more literary if I want."

At that, Mary giggled.

"You aren't making me wear the clothes I died in anymore, either. And you haven't wanted to talk to me in a long time."

The first bit was true, he'd put her in the purple dress he'd liked, though it hadn't been a conscious decision. But for the second part? John shook his head and took another sip.

"I _want_ to talk to you all the time. I just _don't_."

Mary smiled at him, sweetly, and asked, "All right, then. What did you want to ask me?" and when she said that her face was as beautiful and clearly-drawn as she had ever been, even in life.

"You know," John said, because _of course_ Mary knew, she was only a mental exercise he would occasionally perform now, "What would you think about it?"

Mary shrugged one shoulder and frowned ruefully, "Sorry. I don't know anything about me that you don't know, and I _hated_ talking about death. Remember how stressed I got when we had to fill out that life insurance paperwork when Rosie was born?"

"Yeah."

"But I never thought you'd have waited so long. It's a bit out of character."

John frowned up at her, "Your fault. You _really_ screwed me up."

Mary blew a raspberry at him, "As if I'd planned it."

Then, hesitantly, she continued, "I will say, though… the contract we agreed to did have a defined end date built right in. 'Until death parts us.' Which it did. So I've sort of put it out of my power to object. Now all that matters is what _you_ think about it."

John ran a hand through his hair and took a drink.

"I don't know. It didn't even seem possible, until recently. And things are good, even without, aren't they? It's a good life. Just-"

"Lonely, sometimes."

"Yeah. I mean obviously not Miss Melanie."

"God, no," Mary snorted, "She's literally half your age."

"And there are some inkwells into which nobody sensible dips his pen and my kid's teacher has to top that list," John said, sardonically, "But maybe somebody. _No_ idea who."

Mary half-sat on the edge of the desk. If she were real, she would have been close enough to smell, to touch. But even when he'd been arguably insane he'd never gotten to the point where he'd try to test that, so he certainly didn't now. He _did_ look where she angled her head, at the notebook he kept on the blotter, and listened when she softly said, "Try writing it down."

He uncapped a pen and drummed the end on the page, before beginning with:

 _Maternal._

 _Good with children._

 _Loves Rosie._

Mary nodded, slowly.

"Absolutely," she agreed, "Non-negotiable. And if you're after a daycare provider, totally sufficient. But just _possibly_ not quite what you're really looking for here."

John rested his chin in his hand and looked up at Mary, who scoffed lightly at him.

"Oh, come on. This isn't all that hard. What did you like about _me?_ Start there."

 _Pretty._

Mary made a face at him. John sighed, and scratched through the entry.

 _Funny._

 _Intelligent._

 _No weird hangups around sex._

She chuckled softly at that one.

"We did have some good times together. In _and_ out of bed."

 _Fancies me._

"I really did, didn't I?" Mary said wistfully.

"Yeah, you _were_ a bit obvious about it," John smiled back at her.

"Oh shut up, like you didn't make googly eyes at me too. Anyway we got _married_ , so it's _fine_."

 _Likes Sherlock._

"That might be a bit of an ask."

 _Can put up with Sherlock._

"Better."

 _Doesn't mind my second job. If she actually liked it that'd be ideal._

 _Independent._

Mary nodded again, and said, "Good But-"

"But what?" John asked.

"How about the rest? How about the things about me that you didn't like?"

John looked down at the short list, and hesitated, before writing:

 _Honest._

 _Trustworthy._

Mary looked heartstruck and teary-eyed at that last one, which was a deeply unfair gesture on the part of his subconscious, and murmured, "I think… I think maybe if we'd had more time. I think we could have gotten back to trust again."

John cleared his throat. Even now, he could still be surprised by regret. He said, slowly, "Yeah. I think maybe. But we didn't, and I can't go through that again."

"All right," Mary replied, dabbing at her eyes with some supernatural kleenex that she'd conjured.

He started writing again:

 _So no spies, assassins, or superagents._

"Do you honestly think that's all that likely to accidentally happen _twice_?" Mary asked, curiously.

"With my track record I wouldn't like to rule it out."

 _So no spies, assassins or superagents. (Get external confirmation of this before proceeding.)_

Mary was giggling at him, and John muttered, "Shut up."

 _While we're at it, also no on the following: smugglers-slash-acrobats, criminal masterminds, professional dominatrixes-_

"But you'd be totally fine with an _amateur_ dominatrix? I ask only for clarity."

" _Shut up._ "

 _While we're at it, also no on the following: smugglers-slash-acrobats, criminal masterminds, professional dominatrixes, blackmailers, international arms dealers, sexy Mycroft minions, disguised secret Holmes sisters… actually let's just rule out_ _any_ _Holmes siblings, cousins, relations, employees, and homeless network members._

Mary's eyebrows were near her hairline.

"Homeless. Network. Members?"

"Before your time," John groaned, and threw his head back, before taking another drink, " _God,_ I used to suck at this."

"It certainly sounds that way, yes."

 _A normal woman who has a normal job._

"Yeah, but that's the problem, though, isn't it, cause what you like… what keeps you interested? Hasn't historically been that."

"Maybe I've actually calmed down a bit."

"Maybe," Mary said, though she sounded dubious, "Anything else?"

John thought about it, for a minute.

 _Doesn't want any kids._

"Really?" she asked, "Rosie's your sun-and-stars."

"Yeah, _now_ , but… I'm going to be _fifty_ before too long and I spent two years on survival mode with her. I can't cope with another incontinent, insomniac lunatic who can only communicate by screaming. I'm done."

"Point. Though if you combine that with the first part of this list-"

"Oh."

 _Doesn't want_ _more kids._

John thought for another minute, and then, defiantly, wrote:

 _Pretty._

The list, even in his fairly large script, didn't quite take up a full page. Mary said, quietly, "It really doesn't seem like all that much to ask for."

"Forty-one. I was forty-one, before I found you. And even you didn't have all of this."

Mary laughed, and said, "Well, yeah, but not all that time counts. For… what, the first thirteen years? You weren't particularly interested in girls. And you know that the Army was kind of a sausage fest. So really, with a bit of luck, it's totally possible you might meet somebody nice even before you turn seventy. If you started now."

John set the pen down, screwed the cap back on. If he started now…

His wedding band was plain unadorned gold, slightly battered with use. He hadn't wanted anything fussy. He could put it with Mary's rings, in the jewelry box in the attic, for Rosie to have someday. Or he could wear it on the right hand, he'd seen other widowers do that. Married gay men, too, but he'd gotten past the point of caring about that particular misconception. It acted as a useful filter that caught people who were a waste of time.

John had to twist and pull a bit to get the ring off. He hadn't removed it since she'd put it on him. It was winter, so he didn't have any revealing tan lines, but the ring had actually imprinted a groove into his finger, like he was a topiary.

Sherlock called that groove "adulterer's notch" when he was feeling waggish, and all of a sudden John's gorge rose. There was guilt, and grief, and just… he put the ring back in place, ignoring the pain when he had to force it past the knuckle.

"Not now," he whispered.

Mary had gone. But the thought came, in her voice, "Not now. But sometime."

John finished off the bourbon, washed out the glass, and went to bed.

Notes: In ACD canon, Watson does eventually remarry. If you're a Watsonian, he may in fact have remarried between three and five times (assuming you aren't of the "Mary Morstan didn't die, she just dumped Watson, and the 'second marriage' was them getting back together" school.) But I'm a Doylist and think it's likelier there was just the one:) Despite the title, this story isn't really about his second wife, though she will narrate roughly half of it because it's an incredibly thankless role in canon. Doyle didn't even give her a name. It's about Mary, and what she left behind her. It will (hopefully, eventually, don't hold your breath because I am slow) consist of six chapters, with each one working as a standalone.

The quote about Eurydice is from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ , book 10, as translated by Mary Innes back in the fifties.


	2. HELLO MY NAME IS John W

The function room at _The Colonel Fawcett_ was _heaving,_ and the crowd had oozed out into the public bar and the little gardens at the back of the pub. It reeked of middle-aged desperation. I was miserable.

That's probably why I talked to him, the first time. He had a really unappealing beard back then, and even in my modest heels I was a good hand taller than him. But he looked just as miserable as I felt, and even though the bar was aggressively trying to flog their fifty varieties of gin in the form of a bunch of overpriced cocktails, he'd ignored that and gone straight for the neat whiskey.

As was the custom at these these things we'd all been given little identity stickers to write our names on and wear. His said HELLO, MY NAME IS John W.

"Abandoned, alienated, or awful?" I asked him.

"Sorry, what?"

"Abandoned, alienated, or awful. Which are you?"

"Why should I be any of those?" he asked confusedly.

"You're at a single parents' meetup. So we know you managed to successfully reproduce, which takes at _least_ two people, but clearly the other one isn't around now. So either they died - _abandoned_ , you split up - _alienated_ , or you couldn't get them to stick around in the first place - _awful_."

"Oh, right," he said, and held up his right hand to show me a wedding band, "Abandoned, I guess. Though possibly also awful. You?"

"Ditto," I said, showing him my own rings, "Welcome to club how-the-hell-is-this-my-life."

We clinked glasses and I took another sip. My overpriced gimlet was, to be fair, exquisite. It wasn't the pub's fault I was miserable. We leaned on the bar and watched the overexcited crowd around us.

"I don't think I've seen you at one of these before," I said.

"First time."

"Third, here. And _last_."

"Not a fan?"

"Um, no," I said.

"It's a little bit… intense, isn't it?" he said. Possibly because of the drunken conga line that had just started up. It was four thirty in the afternoon on a Sunday, for God's sake.

"Yeah," I agreed, "When I started coming to these I thought it'd be sort of… nicer? Than regular dating? Because at least we're all theoretically defining ourselves by our children and after the same sorts of thing in life? But it's a bloody trainwreck. I thought maybe the first two were exceptional but fool me three or more times shame on me."

"Shit," he said, "That's not encouraging."

"Have you tried getting out there for real yet?" He didn't have the shell-shocked look of the newly bereaved, but it hadn't been that long since I'd made _my_ first attempts as a widow, and I sympathized with this poor new fledgling.

"Uh, no, not as such. I thought…" he flushed a bit. He was actually rather cute when he did that. "You know, baby steps."

"It's… tricky," I said, lamely.

"Is it?"

"Well, maybe not so much for you, but-" I tried to think of how to explain.

"The last time _I_ went on dates, like real proper 'let's go out and see if I can make any romantic happenings with this new person' sort of dates… I was _twenty-four years old._ That was, um-"

I hesitated. HELLO MY NAME IS John W. looked like he was about my age but you never know if you're with the type who thinks you turn into a hag the minute you hit thirty-five, "You know, a while ago. I was never all that good at it even back then, and it's… different now. You've changed."

"Have I?" he asked, wrinkling his forehead in confusion.

"Not you personally. I mean, well, maybe you have, I don't know you. You as a group. _Men._ Nowadays you all just want to swipe right and immediately ask for nudes. _And_ send birds-eye-view pictures of your penises."

"Ah," he said, and his face cleared, "Yeah, it hasn't been quite that long for me. The dick pic had definitely been invented when I was last single. I admit it's not one of the crowning achievements of masculinity."

"No. No it's not. Nor usually a particularly flattering angle."

"Wouldn't know. I've never personally sent one."

"Really?"

"Scout's honor," he said, holding up three fingers.

"A _gentleman._ "

"Nah, just didn't want to frighten women off."

I side-eyed him. His face was completely innocent.

"Because it's so terrifyingly enormous." I said flatly.

"No, no, by no means, just more... unsettling. Have you ever read any H.P. Lovecraft? Think along those lines."

I inhaled a bit of gimlet and choked. John W. was chuckling at his own joke and once my throat had cleared I joined in.

"I take it you work in advertising," I said, eventually.

"GP, actually, and you started it. I normally can go for minutes at a time without mentioning my dick at all. Did you want another one of those?"

He had a really lovely smile, and sort of sad blue eyes, and my microscopic "fun" budget probably shouldn't have stretched to paying for a second overpriced drink myself. I nodded, and said, "Gimlet, please" and he hurried off to fetch me one. The afternoon was looking up.

After a lengthy wait he bought back my cocktail, and we leaned on the high-top table and looked out over the crowd.

"Should we maybe try that again?"

"Without going into horrific sexual innuendo in the first three minutes?" I replied, batting my eyes.

"Basically," he said, "John Watson. Widower. Live in London, father of Rosie, age five and a half. I'm a bad sport, who is cranky when he sees other people having a nice time."

I smiled, introduced myself, and added, "Widow, mother to Beatrice, sixteen, and Emilia, thirteen. I'm a judgy bitch who enjoys criticizing people who are trying to make an emotional connection under terrible circumstances, and I live in Woking."

"God, I don't know if I'm okay with that. I mean, you seem nice, but Surrey? I don't think we can be friends."

"I'd like to come to the defense of Woking, but… well, I _live_ there. You're totally justified in considering me a pariah."

It was nice to laugh with a man again. _And_ to drink for free.

"What do you do when you aren't being a judgy bitch?" John asked

"Well, it's a vocation, or a calling, even," I said, considering, "You never really stop. But on the weekdays I'm an administrative assistant at my girls' school. Boring, I know."

Boring wasn't the half of it. But it came with heavily discounted school fees for Bee and Emilia, and it turns out a second-class marketing degree with fifteen years of dust on it doesn't exactly make the employers beat down your door. Thus I took it and smiled about it, since it combined "eating and making rent" with "letting my children stay in their exorbitant but excellent school" and "not going on the game, if that's even a possibility in your forties."

"I don't know," John said, "It sounds nice. Normal. And you get to see them during the day."

I giggled. I couldn't help it.

"You haven't got any teenagers yet."

"Um, no-" he said curiously.

"They barely let me ride their same trains to and from school… just so long as I never acknowledge their presence or interact with them. Certainly speaking to them during daylight hours is right out. I believe they try to give the impression that they own a glamorous flat all on their own and weren't technically _born_ , as such."

"Something to look forward to, I guess."

"You should. It's actually my favorite age so far. I mean, you love them when they're babies and then they get more fun and interactive and then all of a sudden they become sort of… grumpy, hot tempered, weird… but lovely real people. And you seldom daydream about the good old days when you could legally horsewhip children at all. Not _never_. But seldom."

We sipped our drinks, and John remarked mildly about one particularly keen couple, "I will say that _that_ right there is an unusual way to form an emotional connection under terrible circumstances."

"As a doctor do you think it's dangerous to get your tongue quite that deep into a stranger's throat?"

"Do you want to get out of here?"

I raised my eyebrows at him.

"Not very optimistic, are you?"

He went brick red, and stammered, "Shit, no, that's not what I meant… just, if you aren't having any fun we could go and have a chat someplace quieter. Coffee shop or something."

"I should actually probably just finish this and then head home, sorry. It's a long trip."

"Oh. Okay."

I had pity on him, and said, "But you can take my number if you like."

He grinned at me and… oh, _there_ were some butterflies. I honestly hadn't been expecting that.

An hour and a half, two trains, and one bus later I let myself into my grotty little flat and greeted my daughters who were sitting at the dining table and gazing intensely into their personal electronic devices.

"Did you two eat yet?" I asked, and received a distracted chorus of yeses. In Beatrice's case, this probably meant "I've been really focusing on some sort of impossibly complex equation and haven't remembered to have any food since breakfast." With Emilia it was probably more like "I've had a pound of cheese and two cup-of-noodles because I am undergoing yet another growth spurt and will need new shoes again next month." Either way I thought they could probably both do with some actual nutrients, and was rummaging through the fridge when I got a text alert.

-Just so you know, I'm not going to phone you for two days so you think I'm really cool and nonchalant about the whole thing.

I bit my lip and smiled and replied.

 _-That's fine. I'm going to claim to be unavailable for the first night you suggest. This will give you the impression I'm very popular and busy._

-Glad we're on the same page.

I set the phone back down and noticed that the girls were staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Mum, did you actually _meet_ somebody at that thing?" Bee asked curiously. I'd been worried that the girls would be upset by my starting to date again, but thus far they'd been treating it as a sort of pitiful soap opera and were having a wonderful time with it.

"Maybe," I said, after consideration.

She sighed, fetched her laptop from her school bag, and opened it up.

"What's his name?"

"Since I've had exactly one drink and half an hour of chat with him I think we can possibly hold off on the google stalking for a bit."

Bee sighed and said with the smug superiority of the teenager who has been on precisely one date in her entire life, "Moth-errrrr. This isn't the seventies anymore. You have to be _responsible_ about these things _._ What if he's a perv? Or a _pedo_."

"Even in the best case scenario he's not meeting either of you two for ages so we can worry about his being a pedo if and when that time comes. In the meantime maybe I could do with a good perving." Also I'd never been older than four in the seventies, not that that _really_ matters, but still.

My oldest daughter was making gagging sounds when my youngest looked up from _my_ phone and said, "His name's John Watson. Really, mum, you're going for _another_ white guy?"

I narrowed my eyes. When Bee had first started her adolescence she'd gotten kind of sneaky and sullen and picked up a cigarette habit, though since she wasn't nearly as sneaky as she believed I put a stop to that last one pretty quickly. Emilia, by contrast, had gotten her consciousness raised somewhere and was now focusing on being more-Chinese-than-thou-art. This was obviously preferable to lung cancer and angst but every now and then got deeply obnoxious.

"Yes, _Haitao_ ," I said, because of course she wanted to go by her middle name now, "He is. Much like your _father_ was and like fifty percent of you _is_. And since I respect your privacy and don't snoop through _your_ mobile, kindly do me the same courtesy."

"It's not _the_ John Watson, is it?" Bee asked me.

"Who's _the_ John Watson?" I asked, chopping broccoli.

"You know, the detective, with the blog. It's really good. He does all sorts of secret agent stuff too."

"I _really_ shouldn't think so," I laughed, imagining _me_ dating a secret agent.

"I guess it's a pretty common sort of name. There's probably a ton of them and they can't _all_ be _Doctor_ Watson."

I set down the knife.

"Wait, what?"

Notes: The Colonel Fawcett is a real pub, in Camden in London, though the gathering and meetup group depicted here is imaginary. Should you ever be in the neighborhood I can heartily recommend it.


	3. Flesh, Bone, and Heart's Blood

Sherlock Holmes, _definitely_ in his mind palace focusing on matters of _high_ importance, was reclining on the sofa at Baker Street when the knock at the door came. When he did not move, Molly Hooper came out of the kitchen, dishcloth in hand, made an exasperated noise, and said, "I'll just get that, shall I?"

He could hear the door creak open and Molly, the harpy, _chirped_ , "Hello, my precious perfect darling! Hi John!"

She was nice to _them_ , of course.

Watson replied, "Hallo, aunt Molly. Shall we ah-tic-u-late the thkeleton today?" She had acquired from somewhere a faint lisp and an oddly upper-class old-Harrovian accent. Sherlock _had_ pointed this out to John in the event that an appointment with a speech therapist might be in order, but John had just stared back at him and said, "I'm not all that fussed about it, to be honest."

Molly considered, and answered, "Maybe. I believe the beetles have done their work, but we'll still probably need to do some cleaning and degreasing before we can start with the reassembly. Why don't you run upstairs and put on your PPE and we'll have a look?"

Which was yet another example of _Molly_ being wrong. In _addition_ to being a harridan. There were far more efficient mechanisms to clean bone, like maceration, and none of them involved the effort and expense of maintaining a colony of _dermestidae._ Sherlock had managed to learn this quite quickly once _he'd_ taken up the hobby, but as typical of Molly sentiment and tradition overwhelmed reason.

As Watson thudded up the stairs to John's old room on her stout little legs, John said quietly to Molly, "You do realize that you're going to make my kid _deeply_ weird, right?"

"No, surely not," Molly replied, "I mean I started doing taxidermy when I was about her age, and look how I turned out."

Sherlock could hear the fond smile in John's voice as he said, "Oh. I guess it's okay, then. Thanks again for looking after her tonight."

"Shpff," Molly scoffed lightly, "You know we're always happy to."

"We? Where's himself at?"

"He's sulking over there on the couch because I was right."

The bloody _shrew_ was going to _tell_ him, wasn't she?

"About what?" John inquired curiously.

"Pandas," Molly said, in a precise, articulate snap.

"Ye-ah?" John replied slowly.

"Big black and white fuzzy things? Eat bamboo? Normally named Ling Ling or something similar?"

"Uh-huh."

"Are in fact real animals and not, as _some_ people think, _imaginary_ like dragons or the Loch Ness monster."

"You're kidding."

"Not even a bit."

"Wow."

"I had better go up and keep an eye on Rosie," Molly said. Then, after a brief hesitation, she added, "You look very nice tonight, John. Have a good time."

This last remark snapped Sherlock out of his brown study, since it was hardly typical for Molly to remark on John's manly beauty or lack thereof. She had actually managed to refrain from commenting on last month's horrifying attempt at a goatee, which had moved even young Watson to plead, "Daddy make it go away."

John ambled in from the entryway, saying, "Evening, Sherlock. I can't believe you've deleted _pandas_." Then he sat in his old chair and looked at his watch. Sherlock, finally, moved his head so he could look at him.

 _Expansive mood, unusually carefully shaven (apart from the spot beneath the left ear that he always misses due to the poor light from his north-facing bathroom window), newly ironed shirt (purchased replacement collar stays), fresh haircut, cologne…_

Sherlock sat up, abandoned the original plan which had been to point out that pandas are almost never the victims or perpetrators of crimes and thus really don't _need_ to occupy much space in the brain of a consulting detective and spat, "Are you going on a _date_?"

John looked alarmed, and muttered, "Well, yeah, but keep your voice down. I don't want Rosie to know about it unless we get… you know, serious."

He actually sounded pleased with himself. Sherlock raised an eyebrow, and said, "I can see why not. I can imagine she might be hurt to know she's being abandoned by her father so he can go cavort with some floozy."

John's good humor flew off him in one swoop, and he said in that quiet-but-strained 'angry' voice, "I am not _cavorting_ , I'm spending four hours watching a film and eating dinner. While I do this, _my_ daughter, Sherlock, will happily spend Saturday evening in her godfather's office helping her godmother stretch a dead badger's hide back onto its skull in _exactly_ the same way she does roughly once a week when I go out and entertain _you_. And… and she's not a bloody _floozy_ , she's a secretary at a girls' school. So what the hell are you on about?"

"Simply pointing out that you _really_ don't learn from previous mistakes."

"To which previous mistakes do you refer?" John asked snippily.

"Oh, I don't know," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes, "The last time you got led around by your dick and you wound up dallying with my sister leaps readily to mind."

John went pale, and fixed his jaw, and said, "It's not at all the same thing."

"No?"

"No. It's not. Because Mary's dead."

That dropped into the conversation like a lead weight. John sighed, and his shoulders sagged.

"And I miss her, _just like you do_ , but I can't have her back and I _also_ miss what you've got. Just someone who's on _my_ team to have ridiculous fights with about... pandas, apparently."

John chuckled, despite himself. "Though _our_ favorite stupid row was 'how to load the dishwasher properly.' But the things I do can't hurt her any longer, and so it's _not_ wrong to me to... to try for High Wycombe again. If I'm responsible and thoughtful about it."

Sherlock loathed when John had clearly pregamed his arguments. He struggled for the words and finally had to say, "It feels… disloyal."

John shrugged.

"I felt that way for a long time too. Honestly, though, it's not. Having had that life with her is the only reason I'm even bothering. The prospect of _dating_ at our age is terrifying."

"Not a piece of information I'll need."

"Yeah, I don't think it's likely you will, even-"

"No," Sherlock explained, "I _won't_. I'm a smoker who's routinely physically attacked and also had a heroin habit-"

"Addiction."

" _Whatever_. For twenty years, off and on. Meanwhile Molly is three years younger than I am, eats wheat germ daily and jogs _for fun._ My life expectancy is far less than hers."

John frowned at him.

"I'd actually thought you were worrying she would dump you over pandas rather than about your _death_ , you morbid ass."

Sherlock frowned back.

"Why would I worry about _my_ death? I admit it's probably unpleasant while it's happening but once it's over with all my problems would be finished."

"Ohhh…" John's eyes widened, and he nodded understandingly.

" _What?_ " Sherlock snapped.

"You really _are_ a one-woman-per-lifetime man, aren't you? Sherlock, you know that what happened to me is… I mean, it _is_ pretty rare. You're right. Molly's healthy and safe and you're basically a collection of bad habits in a stupid coat-"

"You can take my coat and cram it up your-"

"You're _definitely_ going to die before she does and so you don't need to think about it much. I didn't mean to send that brain of yours off down the dark spiral."

Sherlock stared at the patterns on the carpet.

"I _don't_ think about it," he replied, "I can't even imagine it. I believe _I_ would die, if she did."

The corner of John's mouth quirked up. "Yeah, you think that, but you wouldn't. Because you have a life, and responsibilities, and people who depend on you."

His eyes flicked over to the staircase that Molly and Rosie had climbed.

"So you'd put your head down and get through it. And then eventually you'd be out on the other side and you'd have to figure out what happens next."

Sherlock frowned at John who was acting… almost wise. Very far out of character.

"And you… really miss what I've got?" he asked, eventually.

"Yeah. Yeah I do."

"You wish that _you_ were part of a functioning romantic partnership."

"Um-"

"Or to put it another way, my level of engagement with a woman has for some time been superior to yours, making me a more complete human being than you are."

"Oh do fuck off," John said, but he was smiling again.

Sherlock sighed theatrically, "I suppose I can't stop you. Although-" he hesitated, an unpleasant thought having just arisen, "You're quite sure, John, that your date's definitely _not_ my sister again?"

John stared, horrorstruck, into the distance, and muttered, "Yes…?"

"Only you _know_ you don't always pay close attention to their faces, and I haven't visited in person for two weeks so I can't _quite_ guarantee she's still at Sherrinford. If she ever decides she wants to escape again she absolutely will and she really did like you-"

John shook his head, and his eyes refocused. "Did she? Good lord. And no. Definitely not. She's quite a bit taller than Eurus. And, well, Asian."

"Both are difficult but not impossible to fake, especially for a woman. They can get away with wearing far heavier cosmetics-"

"I'm _sure_ ," John stated. Then he hesitated, and taking his notepad out of his pocket, wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it over to Sherlock.

"Her name?"

"Yeah. Look, I know you're going to be curious about her and I don't need you popping up tonight and getting us kidnapped or anything. But you _can_ go google her-"

"I do not _google_."

"You totally do. And find out about her that way. I don't need - or _want,_ thank you - to know if she's had her tits done or cheats on her income tax or whatever, but you _can_ see if she's... what she seems to be. Safe, for Rosie. And for me."

Sherlock let a breath out, slowly.

"No more Marys for you, then?"

John chuckled, stood, and cracked his back.

"There aren't any other Marys. No more Bond girls is all I'm aiming for. And I'm running late."

With that, he left Sherlock to his thoughts. And his laptop, on which he used _Bing_ … along with some very not-available-to-the-public and illegal back doors to look at the more official documents.

Quite quickly, he was able to determine that if the woman _was_ using a false identity it was much better crafted than "Mary Morstan" had ever been. She had a full and unremarkable medical history, active social media accounts dating back at least a decade and a half, and a mediocre but complete credit report. The convenient prematurely dead husband was obviously a tantalizing field of investigation, so Sherlock read the report on the man's autopsy, which had been done by Anthony Evenson at the Royal London. Evenson was no Molly but he was moderately competent and Sherlock could see no reason to find fault with his verdict of death by natural causes. He even agreed with the marginal comment that the man probably _had_ had undiagnosed Marfan syndrome.

The breasts were, as best as could be ascertained from photographs, the originals. Income tax fraud was by far the most tedious thing ever to investigate and so Sherlock didn't even bother trying to find that out.

Probably what she seemed to be, then. Though that was not the same as "safe." Or even "acceptable." Sherlock knew what he had to do, but there was something far more critical that needed to be taken care of first.

In the back room, he changed out of his pyjamas and dressing gown… while Molly's flat had many advantages, particularly in the "not known to be where Sherlock Holmes lives and thus very rarely exploded" category, it was tragically undercloseted, so he still kept a lot of his clothes here. He redressed in a suit, combed and styled his hair, and applied a splash of cologne.

In his battle dress, Sherlock climbed the stairs and tapped on the door to John's old room before popping his head in.

"Watson," Sherlock said, "If I may I'd like to borrow Molly for a moment."

Watson looked up from the cookie sheet on which she was carefully arranging the late badger's metacarpal bones with a pair of plastic forceps. Her dexterity was obviously advancing well, and Sherlock made a mental note to update her spreadsheet. The child gave him a dubious look through her safety glasses (and it would never not be odd to see John's expressions on a juvenile Mary's face), then waved a dismissive hand at him and said "You may."

Molly shook soapsuds off her hands into the basin, then came out with him into the hallway, drawing the door close but not shutting it entirely. Watson had inherited from both parents the ability to create massive destruction in short spans of time when left unattended.

She glared up at him, her chin sticking out defiantly. Sherlock folded his hands behind his back and began.

"Molly, I want to apologize for my behavior earlier. I felt foolish about the pandas and because of that I was... regrettable."

He _really_ had been. The ability to calculate _exactly_ what would be the most offensive possible remark at a given moment was an unfortunate side effect of being a deductive genius.

Molly's chin wobbled, and her bristling stance deflated.

"Yes, but… I shouldn't have teased you about it, Sherlock. _Everybody_ has some gaps in their knowledge. It was nasty of me."

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"I _have_ been known, just _occasionally_ , to be smug about my intelligence. It'd take a saint not to enjoy it when I have these minor lapses."

"Even so. I'm sorry too."

As always, she fit perfectly into his arms, and Sherlock rested his chin on the top of her head and breathed in her fragrance.

"I've just been reminded that you are essential to my existence, Molly Hooper. If the price of admission is getting made fun of when I'm an idiot I'm happy to pay it."

They had a rather nice (though very brief, because of small child five feet away) snog, and then with happiness brilliantly restored, Sherlock announced, "I may have to go out tonight. I've made a breakthrough in the Wilson case and wrapping it up neatly will involve some precise timing."

Which oddly made Molly frown up at him, and say, "Sherlock-" in a warning tone.

"What?"

"You're not going to… bother them, are you? Only John's told me what you used to be like when he'd try to date. And he's needed this, for a long time now."

Sherlock mentally cursed Molly's always-acute perception. He debated trying a lie, but ultimately decided against it and went with, "I'm willing to acknowledge that he may need _something_. I simply want to be sure that _this_ is an appropriate something. You know he's no good at that kind of decision."

Molly, radiantly beautiful and endlessly tender, considered this, and rather to Sherlock's surprise, nodded slowly.

"It's a bit of a baptism by fire for the poor woman, but you do sort of have a point. And she's going to have to see what his life is like eventually."

She was an angel walking the earth. Sherlock dipped down for another kiss, struck to the heart by her perfection.

"Best behavior," he said, "I promise."

Notes: Molly's taxidermy hobby, as far as I can tell, is an Arwel Wyn Jones invention. This chapter makes use of a prompt mizjoely gave me, "Molly gets Sherlock involved in taxidermy (the hobby she supposedly has) and John is Not Amused? But Rosie loves it?" The snit Sherlock and Molly are in may be based on an incident with my then-boyfriend, now husband, who on a trip to Cozumel solemnly mansplained to me that the scientific name for the lizard we were looking at was "skank." For which I heartlessly (but justly) mocked him. Also off a thirty-something college-educated buddy of mine who had somehow missed learning about the existence of the giraffe.


	4. What we did on our dates

On our first date, I wore a red dress with thin straps and a deep v-cut in the front, which I paired with a demure black cardi and flats. I was trying to convey "Sexy but not slutty and also not a reason to have bloody stupid male anxiety about my being taller than you." That last has been an ongoing problem through my life.

John wore middle-aged man outfit B, a blue checked button-down shirt and khakis (Outfit A is a blue checked button-down shirt and jeans. Outfit C is a t-shirt and jeans). I have no idea what he was trying to convey, because men's clothing is _boring_. But he'd gotten rid of his awful goatee and overall I approved. He's quite handsome, and the hair _really_ does it for me.

We met at a tapas place in Southwark and I greeted him with, "So… you're _actually_ a private detective."

John sighed, and said, "You found the blog, huh?"

"Uh-huh. My oldest is a fan."

"It's _very_ part-time, nowadays. I honestly do make my living as a GP. Also I think if you asked Sherlock he'd be quite clear that I _assist_ a _consulting_ detective but am not one myself."

I frowned. He seemed kind of defensive.

"I didn't mean that as a criticism at all. Frankly I might have led with it if I were you. It's dead sexy."

He looked cutely flustered, and asked, "Really?"

"Oh, yeah. I love mystery stories."

"I've actually written one of those. It's getting published this fall."

"I SAW!" I exclaimed, "That's _amazing_. I've put down my name to get it at the library when it comes out."

He raised an eyebrow at me and remarked, "I can _actually_ get you a copy for free, if you'd like."

" _Wow,_ " I drawled.

It was a good date. He was the only person I've ever met who guessed why I named my children what I named them without being told. I do always enjoy a reading man… they're so rare. But I didn't kiss him goodbye at the end of the night. I know that sounds priggish and "The Rules-"y, but it's not playing hard to get if you _actually_ have some legitimate qualms about a person. And I did, despite all my reassurances that I like detectives. His blog details a lot of _incredibly_ dangerous adventures and it stressed me out.

This was not totally logical, I admit. My husband's work had involved his sitting all day in a posh office with no more risk than a dodgy curry eaten at lunch, and yet here I was. Certainly nobody expects cops and soldiers and firemen to stay single or rules them out as potential partners. I just wasn't quite clear how that sort of thing fit into real life.

Which actually segues nicely into date number two, dinner-and-a-movie. The movie was awful… bathetic and overacted and all the film stars I used to have crushes on in my teens were starting to look like they were made of leather. But the theater was practically empty, so we sat in the back and made fun of the show in low voices for two hours and had a lovely time.

The restaurant we picked afterwards was busy and there was a wait for a table. John had just come back from the bar with our drinks when an absolute silver fox of a man walked up to him and said, "Hi John. Can you believe this? You could have knocked me over with a feather when-"

Then he noticed me standing there, looked alarmed, and trailed off with an, "Oh. Um. Hello, miss."

"Greg," John said leerily, "What are you doing here?"

"Um, well, I _thought_ that we were-"

"Jabez Wilson," a third man interrupted him in a deep portentious voice, "Youtube vlogger under the pseudonym theginjaninja, solicited by an online acquaintance to join an organization known as the league of the red-headed men due to his unusually vivid coloration. Said organization engaged him, once a week, to livestream himself reading "Fodor's Guide to London" from an otherwise empty office in Canary Wharf for four hours, at a rate of five hundred quid a go. Following along so far?"

John stared at him and said, "This is Sherlock. He was _just leaving._ "

Sherlock continued, speaking directly to me, "However, upon reporting to his position yesterday he found the otherwise empty office was now _entirely_ empty apart from a sign saying "the league is dissolved." All trace of their presence appears to have been scrubbed from the internet, and the owners of the office building know nothing more about the renters of the space than that they are a shell corporation in the City of London. He sought out my services out of curiosity as to why this league would go to the effort of hiring him to the tune of three thousand pounds only to drop him so unceremoniously afterwards."

"Not. _Bloody_. Now," John gritted out.

"Is his wife having an affair?" I asked. All three men laser-focused their attention on me, and I continued, shyly, "I mean… it seems like a lot of effort, but if his job is blogging he's probably very much underfoot. She might not have another way to get him out of the way reliably."

"He's a _vlogger_ called theginjaninja," Sherlock spat, "How likely do you _really_ think it is that he's got a wife?"

I shrugged.

"Lid for every pot."

"And the affair thing is _exactly_ what you originally thought, mate," Greg chimed in helpfully.

"He's _unmarried_. No girlfriends, no boyfriends, nothing. Just a flatmate. A _new_ flatmate."

"Pranks show?" I asked.

"For that amount of money and time? And with no humiliation component?"

I was honestly stumped, and I thought about it for a minute. But I _do_ read a lot of mysteries, so I started to put together another idea, "Well, then either they needed him to be there at a known time… but that doesn't seem to be the case. So they needed him _not_ to be somewhere else? Does he normally work somewhere there's something… secret? Or valuable?"

Sherlock looked at me, utterly disgusted that I'd figured it out (it's a distinct facial expression on him, you can tell what he's thinking even when you don't really know him) and muttered, "Next door to it. Mace's auction rooms, where the jewel collection of the late Earl of Richmond is due to go up for bid _in three days_."

John's thunderous face disappeared and was replaced with an almost childlike delight.

"Oh, is it-"

"Had Wiggins ring the bell at Wilson's flat and John Clay _himself_ answered it. They're tunneling through the back of the utility closet into the underground safe," Sherlock announced, folding his arms across his chest with a wide smile.

"Shit," John said, before turning back to me and explaining, "It's the Clay gang. They've been the best jewel thieves in Europe for probably… ten years now. Millions of pounds lifted."

"They're moving tonight," Greg added, "Or so this one thinks. So him and I and MCD are going to stake it out, and we'll leave you two to your dinner."

"Um, yeah, that's good, thanks Greg."

"Shouldn't you go along?" I asked.

Which wasn't what I really wanted to ask. I _really_ wanted to ask if _I_ could go along, and I probably would have if I'd been twenty years younger and wasn't, like, a single mum.

"I'm-" John paused, "I'm on a date with _you_ , tonight."

"Well, yeah," I said, "But we _can_ get dinner whenever, and it seems like this is sort of a rare opportunity for you. So you should go."

"Not that bloody rare," Greg muttered.

"If- I mean… only if you're sure. We'll reschedule right away?"

I smiled. Then I wrapped a hand around the back of John's neck and whispered in his ear, "Can't wait to read about it," and planted a pretty good kiss on him, ignoring the fascinated expressions of his friends. This was mostly out of legitimate interest and only _slightly_ to make him feel sad about ditching me. Totally worked, too, John got startled and blushed and fumbled in his wallet with a, "Here, I was going to pay, obviously, I'm really… sorry, have a good time."

The three of them left me, Sherlock with one last searching glance and a slow nod. I heard Greg asking, "Where the _hell_ do you keep finding women who are actually into this shit?"

And John replying, " _The Colonel Fawcett_ , in Camden."

I looked down in my hand and saw that John was apparently expecting me to pay for dinner… with his American Express card. Either he was remarkably trusting or extremely distractable. (Knowing him now: both. It's both.) But I shrugged and when our table opened up I ordered some very good sushi and put it on his card. He'd started texting me updates even before the edamame arrived. Really, I thought, the crimefighting thing wasn't _that_ a big deal after all.

On our third date we went to a Salvador Dali exhibition at the Tate Modern. I don't remember _why,_ neither of us particularly like his stuff, but I'm sure at the time it seemed like a good idea. We kissed hello. We held hands, and talked,and wandered about looking at paintings. And then we and everyone else in the place were taken hostage by a group of armed radicalized surrealists wearing animal costumes and calling themselves "Dali for the People."

Yes really. This sort of thing happens a _lot_ when you hang out with John.

Sherlock (who had infiltrated the gang a month previous) and Greg (who was in charge of the SWAT team) actually showed up to that one as well, though I do think it was a legitimate coincidence. Certainly Sherlock looked horrified when he saw us, and he and John had a nasty little hissed argument as we hid in the toilets in which I overheard the phrase, "Not everything I do is about _you_ , John!"

 _I_ screwed up date four… or rather, Emilia did, by getting a compound fracture of her right radius during volleyball practice... which I learned about _just_ when I'd arrived for our cycling outing. John drove me over to meet her in the A &E, and later sent up a box of chocolates which she hoovered up in thirty seconds flat. Somewhat more to the point, he also arranged for one of his old RAMC buddies- who was now a very important orthopedic surgeon indeed- to take her case.

This man, Andrew Murray, was a big bluff hooray who told awful dad jokes to make Emilia smile and then put a plate in her wrist with such skill that she healed up perfectly and barely has a scar. He came out to chat with me while she was in post-op and waved off my thanks with an, "Anything for a friend of old Johnny's," and a long boring story about how the two of them had pioneered some sort of improvement to the Whipple procedure back in Afghanistan. Then he leered at me and added, "Glad to see the old dog hasn't changed."

"How's that?" I inquired.

"He always did have an eye for a pretty woman. We actually used to call him 'three-continents' because-" he trailed off at that point, realizing who he was talking to.

"Because why?" I asked innocently.

Murray cleared his throat and said, "He loves to travel. Been all over the place."

Since apparently I look like an idiot who can't recognize the bro code being deployed right in front of her face.

Date five, two large men in suits bundled him into a big black town car in the name of national security while we were waiting for a cab. _I_ got taken to a very hearty, very _alcoholic_ tea at the Ritz by Sherlock's brother's personal assistant Andrea, who was delightful and knew a TON of celebrity gossip.

Over the course of the seven weeks we'd been doing this we'd obviously had other interactions via phone and text and email, and I really _did_ like him, but I was beginning to suspect the relationship might actually be cursed. So I took matters into my own hands. I cut out early from work on a day I knew he had off, took the tube to Kentish Town, then called him up with a big lie about how I just happened to be in the neighborhood and would he like to meet up for a coffee?

He would, and we rendezvoused at a Costa. He was happy that day, I remember, because he'd just gotten the author's review copies of his first novel. I said, "I'd love to read your manuscript."

"I'll bring one along next time."

"Or we could go right now and look at it at your flat."

He stared at me for a minute, and eventually asked, "Okay, I'm a bit out of practice at this so feel free to tell me to piss off but was that right there you saying-"

"That I'm interested in going up and taking a look at your etchings? Yes."

"Good. Great! That's… really great!"

His flat was… is… lovely, light and airy and quite big for that neighborhood. It was stuffed with Lego and "Moana" toys and at that moment smelled of cleaning products, such is the thrilling life of the single parent on our days off. His _bedroom_ was tidy, minimalist, and monkish, which last bit we set about fixing.

Sex with John was _exactly_ like dating John. He was good at both, and had clearly done them a lot. In both, he was gentlemanly. He made sure I got off and then when I suggested we proceed to the main event, said that he really hadn't planned on this today and didn't think he'd be all that impressive if I wanted to call it an afternoon.

I kissed him, and said, "You've impressed me already." Which was true. He erred on the side of too gentle, that first time, and he honestly did come a bit fast when we got down to it, but it was good. Promising.

And of course in both dating and sex he was just faintly dispassionate, like part of him was observing calmly from the outside. He was however very polite about throwing me out later so he could go fetch Rosie from school.

Date number six went off without a single hitch, which sort of confused both of us. Then the next time we slept together (which wasn't for three freaking _weeks_ , it being nearly impossible to sustain a sex life when you can't have sleepovers due to your three nosy underaged housemates) I made sure we got a hotel room, a full evening, and I tied him to the bed and blew his mind.

I ruined a brand new pair of tights doing it but life is too bloody short to _ever_ have dispassionate sex.

In time I let him meet Bee and Emilia. By which I mean he took all of us out to dinner where they brutally interrogated him about his intentions with every means short of actual waterboarding. They gave me their approval, afterwards, which was good because I wasn't going to proceed without it, but also I didn't think it was going to matter because there was no way he was going to phone me again after that. My children can be _frightening._

He did, though. It took him three days, but he did. After that they all became great friends and began conspiring against me. I think Bee may have had a bit of a crush, back then. They asked him to teach them self-defense, which he did, with my permission. I did _not_ give him permission to call it "Five ways to fuck up an arsehole" in order to make them giggle, but that happened too.

Then _I_ got to meet Rosie. In those days she was a tiny little porcelain doll of a person, with huge green eyes and a cloud of golden ringlets which John carefully braided into two pigtails every morning. He was touchy about making sure she always looked well cared for. At first, I thought she was one of those rather stern, severe children that you meet sometimes, but it turned out that was mostly because, like Sherlock, she thought that I was sketchy as hell.

I let both of them get on with that. Sherlock because frankly he's always kind of a dick to me (he was _very_ fond of John's first wife) and I've got minimal inclination to try and kiss up to people when they're like that. Rosie, because even though children can't always _articulate_ their feelings that doesn't mean they aren't incredibly sensitive to people trying to manipulate them. John hadn't bought any other women around her since her mum had died, and it was only natural that she wasn't delighted at the prospect of it happening now.

I mean, a little _mild_ buying of their love is okay. She had wild enthusiasms over Bee's teal streaks, so I bought her some hair chalk of her own, for example. Otherwise I just… was me, and let her come to her own conclusions. And slowly, over the course of time, she did. As we got to be friends I started to see the funny, intelligent hell-raiser that she truly was, and I loved it. Six is my favorite age for children. They're growing and blossoming every day, but still sort of squidgy and gentle, since life hasn't time to knock too many sharp edges onto them yet.

One ordinary day, we were walking as a group to the park and came to an intersection. Rosie knew she wasn't allowed to cross big streets by herself, so she looked around, and quite calmly put her soft little hand into mine.

As soon as we'd crossed, she dropped my hand and bolted off full-tilt to do something interesting, a habit she gets from her dad. Meanwhile I was left standing there _consumed_ by a yearning empty-armed feeling that was all too familiar. Nick and I, once upon a time, had spent tens of thousands of pounds on horrible hormones which I willingly injected into my own ass, because in the dark corners of my heart I hadn't been sure that that yearning could be satisfied by a child that I didn't make.

Which was _such_ a good thing to be wrong about.

But it's _easy_ to fall in love with children. Basically you go to the hospital where they knock you on the head and hand you a baby and it happens automatically afterwards. Falling in love with a grown man is a bit trickier. There's stuff I had to accept… little flaws like John's habitual lateness and the atonal droning whistle he makes when he's thinking. And big things like the fact that he was a desperately lonely man who had lunged headfirst into an extremely serious relationship with the very first woman who filled all the parameters he had in mind and said, "Maybe."

For his part, he presumably had to ignore that the time I spent with him was the only time I got to visit the middle classes anymore. I have no little flaws, being like Mary Poppins practically perfect in every way.

And that's just life. Sometimes love can be entirely practical and cynical… and still true. It is what it is.

Notes: Mrs.-W-to-be's children are named after two of the greatest sassmistresses in Shakespeare, Beatrice from "Much Ado About Nothing" and Emilia from "Othello." The case is very closely based off of Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed League."


	5. Hymn of the Other Mothers

"As I suspected, the test came back positive. You're pregnant."

"That's _really_ not possible. I'm infertile, for starters."

"The other things that put HCG in your urine are much rarer and less curable than being pregnant, trust me. And infertile usually just means it's _unlikely_ , not impossible. But hop up, we'll get the ultrasound going."

Some time later, the doctor said, "Told you. Looks like you're about eleven weeks along, judging by the size. A Christmas baby."

"Ah, see, no!" Rosie Watson laughed shockily, staring in denial at the monitor and doing the math in her head, "Because eleven weeks ago my boyfriend was in New York and _I_ was here."

Doctor Rojas raised a grizzled white eyebrow and stated, "We date pregnancies from the last menstrual period, although obviously for women like you what we have to do is add two weeks to the date of conception. The sex that got you pregnant would have happened around _nine_ weeks ago."

"Oh. Oh, yeah, that would work."

Rosie leaned her head back onto the thin paper-covered pillow and took a deep breath.

"This is just nonsense," she said, after a while, "I don't know anything about being a mother."

"It's mostly about either recapitulating or avoiding what your own mother did," the doctor chuckled, assembling the first of the dozens of guess-what-thing-you-are-doing-to-damage-your-baby pamphlets that Rosie would receive over the next few weeks.

"My mother's dead," Rosie replied, "I never knew her."

Later that afternoon she called the London bureau chief to let him know about her… interesting... condition, and he sighed and said, "Jesus. We need to get you out of there before our insurance chappies find out."

"There" being an embed just behind the front lines of a nasty little South American mini-war over probably-illusory tellurium deposits in the Orinoquia. Leaving was fine with Rosie. The weather was terrible and the conflict was untrendy enough that the Rosamund Watson byline wasn't getting much exercise.

Really, when Rosie thought about it, the only problems she had were that she was single and pregnant; the father, barely her boyfriend, was a fellow war correspondent just as peripatetic as she was and newly legitimately _missing_ somewhere in Romania; and _now_ she was unemployed, because there were almost no permanent jobs in news any more and she'd been a freelancer.

It had been an eventful week, actually. Even by her standards.

A day later, she arrived at Heathrow and saw her godmother waiting for her when she emerged from customs. Rosie felt surprised and touched. She hadn't been expecting to see Molly, or anyone. Then another more urgent feeling struck her and she hurried straight past the older woman to the toilets, where she was sick for the fourth time that day.

"I _thought_ these might come in handy," Molly said when Rosie came out of the bathroom, handing over a sleeve of salt crackers and a bottle of ginger ale, "Your mother threw up every day for nine months, with you."

Rosie had loved Molly ever since she could remember, and ever since she could remember Molly had never been quite clear on what things could safely be left unsaid. But she did still give the very best hugs, and Rosie smelled her old familiar scent of lavender and antiseptic and _home_.

"What are you doing here?" Rosie asked.

"I was out here anyway, and I thought since your folks won't be back until tonight I could give you a lift into town."

Rosie frowned.

"They didn't seriously come back from Nanjing early on my account, did they? I'm pregnant, not dying. You all don't need to fuss over me."

"Oh, it's really no fuss," Molly said, looking guiltily away.

Rosie looked more closely at her, and then sighed.

"Why _were_ you here at the airport… and where's Sherlock?"

"Well…" Molly demurred, "Right now he's on a plane. But he'll be in Bucharest in a while."

"Oh God," Rosie cringed, at the thought of her godfather ("Please don't call me Uncle Sherlock, Watson, it implies that your father's my brother and when you consider my _actual_ siblings you can clearly see why you might want to avoid a direct genetic connection to the Holmes family.") flying to a war zone in southeastern Europe and hunting down her absentee boyfriend with a shotgun wedding in mind.

"It's not like that," Molly said, with her usual acute perception, gently taking Rosie's hand, "But… _nobody's_ been able to find where Alec's gone. There haven't been any ransom demands or anything yet, but… the situation over there's a bit fraught at the moment, I guess. Getting someone with Sherlock's skillset to help track him down will be only to the good."

 _Oh,_ Rosie thought, single pregnant unemployed… and _bereaved?_ That thought was too big to have all at once.

"He shouldn't be doing things like that at his age," she said weakly.

"Oh, _please_ say that to Sherlock the next time you see him. Just make sure I'm in the room so I can see his face."

Molly dropped her at the garden flat in Kentish Town where Rosie had grown up and said she'd pop by again after she finished work in the evening. She let herself in with her key and switched the furnace on to warm the chilly space. Her stepmother's fabric and sewing equipment had gradually colonized her old room, but the white twin bed was still there, still neatly made up with a black duvet the teenaged Rosie had picked out during her brief goth phase. Rosie put her carryall on the battered old dresser, tugged the ponytail holder out of her hair, and sat down, at a loss.

Her phone rang. Rosie tapped twice on her wrist to answer it.

"Every war correspondent I've ever met has gotten too snooty about it to write service articles afterwards. If you're not, though, I'm happy to send some your way. Unfortunately the only thing I need right now is eight hundred words, fifty p a word, on 'how to give the ultimate blowjob' but I should have a few more options next week."

Rosie smiled, despite everything. Janine Hawkins had been her mother's best friend, and didn't believe in salutations on mobile conversations because, as she said, "Well you can damn well _see_ that it's me on the caller ID, now can't you?"

"I'm not snooty," Rosie replied, "But I don't think I'm all that good at blowjobs."

She could practically hear the eyeroll over the phone.

"Jayzus. Because this sort of thing really gets ranked on its utility and insight. I think last month we told them "no teeth and make direct eye contact" so maybe try "just a little bit of teeth and imagine you're going down on a woman instead of the feckwit you're actually with." You can write this kind of thing in your sleep and you know it."

Rosie's first job, when she was barely sixteen, had been writing these sort of filler articles for Janine's immensely popular lifestyle site. Janine had sharpened her prose to professional caliber, and made it clear that writing was primarily a way to get paid for telling the truth rather than a deep heartfelt endeavor. Rosie's dad, being a novelist, had vigorously disagreed with this, but by that point Rosie was locked on the road to being a journalist and that was all there was to it.

"Yeah, all right," she agreed. Babies were expensive, probably, and though she'd be collecting on the Colombia gig for the next three months it was good to get out ahead of your finances in this profession.

"I… I heard about your news. Congratulations? Any word on Alec?"

There was no point in asking how Janine had heard about it… she was the _Napoleon_ of media gossip and heard everything.

"Thank you. And no, not yet."

"Oh, love," the older woman said in her soft brogue, "I'm sure he'll turn up. The BBC has a whole team focused on keeping their correspondents safe. And we'll look after you regardless."

Janine sniffled, and blew her nose, and continued, "I can't _believe_ you're going to be a mum. You make me feel old! I remember when you were just a wee gleam in your mother's eye."

Rosie had talked (and thought) about her mother more in the last forty-eight hours than she had done in the year beforehand. She put it aside for the moment and said, "You'll never be old. You look half your age."

"Flatterer. But the secret is never trying to lose weight and starting each day with a glass of iced champagne… just the one, mind. Though I guess you'll have to postpone that bit for nine months."

They said their goodbyes and rang off. Rosie kicked off her shoes, crawled under the musty blankets and stared at the ceiling. Eventually she fell into a fitful, jet-lagged sleep.

When she woke up, it was dark, and she could hear Molly and her stepmother talking in the other room. Rosie sat up, rubbed her bleary eyes, and was making to get out of bed when her father tapped on the door and popped his head in.

"Hi, Rosie Real," John said quietly, and for some reason that baby nickname made the tears that had been building up for the last few days start to fall.

"Hi, Dad," she mumbled as he came and sat next to her and gave her a hug. He smelled… not very nice at the moment, actually, like bourbon and airplanes, really the pregnant sense of smell was almost _creepy_ … but he was just as strong and gentle as always.

"Molly said you've been feeling crappy," he said, going into doctor mode and putting a hand on her forehead.

"Kind of."

"Well, we'll get you into Dr. Turner's surgery first thing tomorrow. I bet you a bit of vitamin B6'll see you right. You're not dehydrated, at least."

"I've been drinking lucozade."

"Good girl."

"And I hope you aren't disappointed in me," Rosie said, snuffling.

He cocked his head to one side, and said wryly, "'Course I'm not. These things _do_ happen. And I know it's been awhile since I pretended to be a moral authority around you but I'm pretty sure I never tried to act like I didn't ever have sex when _I_ was single. Hell, your mum was pregnant with _you_ on our wedding day."

"Really?" She hadn't known that. In fact she wasn't sure quite when her parents' wedding date even _was._ Her dad was hardly inclined to celebrate it.

"Yeah, just barely, but she was. We actually found out about you _during_ the reception."

That sounded like a godfather story, so Rosie asked, "Did Sherlock deduce it?"

"He did," John chuckled, "Basically announced it to everyone in the room right at the end of his toast. Shocked the hell out of me. But you turned out to be a wonderful surprise. Just like this one will be."

Rosie drew in a shuddery breath, and whispered, "I'm just… so scared I'm going to do it wrong."

Her dad looked down at his hands.

"You probably never realized this, growing up, but- I never felt like I was really a natural, at being a father."

Rosie, having at _least_ normal intelligence, had realized this by the time she was seven. That was when she'd started to live with someone who _didn't_ obsessively overthink every decision about their children.

"After your mum died… God, I used to buy so many books on parenting. I didn't have a clue. And I'm not going to lie, it's hard, doing it on your own. Not that I think you'll have to," he hastened to add, "Sherlock's on the case, he'll find Alec. But you and me got through it all right, with help. You'll always have help too. I promise that."

"You did a good job," Rosie said softly.

"I hope so," John snorted, "You're the great love of my life, if I'd screwed that up where would I be?"

He sighed.

"I know it's late but she's already cooking. So if you're ready to watch her die of joy you can come out and get something to eat?"

"I think… I think I'd just like to go back to sleep, actually." This was true. She was exhausted, beyond the jetlag, for no particular reason. Oh, right, the pregnancy. That probably was it.

Her dad smiled fondly, ruffled her hair, and kissed her sweaty forehead, "All right, sweetheart. Sleep well. We'll see you in the morning."

She slept well. Then morning came, and Rosie trudged down the hallway and threw up again. When she got out she was accosted by her stepmother. Like always, _this_ hug was filled with bosoms and guilt. Bosoms, because growing up surrounded by amazons hadn't been able to do anything about shortarse genetics and the woman was _literally_ eight inches taller than her. And guilt, because Rosie'd never quite been able to work out what way was acceptable to feel about her.

Because she wasn't Rosie's _real_ mum, after all. There was no possibility of a mistake in that regard. The job title even usually got paired with "wicked." This was all true, even if she was _also_ the person who helped patiently for hours when fractions seemed like an impossible mystery, the person who got weebly and baked cakes at milestones like first periods, the person who gave unconditional love with fewer caveats than anyone else on earth.

Even when she kissed your forehead and said, "Oh, my poor sickie," and dragged Rosie off to the kitchen, which was fragrant with garlic, sesame oil, and-

"Ginger tea," was the announcement that accompanied the cup, "Tastes like ass so I suggest you add a whole ton of sugar. Usually works but if it doesn't we can try sour or minty, sometimes those do the trick. And if you want to try eating something I've made you my- well, I'd say it was my grandmother's recipe but I looked for ages last night and I can't find the bloody thing, so the internet reconstructed it for me! Did you know that it can do that now? And I think it's pretty much right, though honestly it doesn't matter that much since it's hard to screw up _ji zhou._ Best thing in the world for morning sickness. It was the only thing I could keep down that first trimester with Bee. But then with Emilia I was barely sick at all."

Her stepmother filled a bowl with an absolutely delicious-smelling porridge, sprinkled it with green onions, and sat next to Rosie.

"Pregnancy," she pronounced, "Blows. But you get through it, and you're going to _love_ being a mother."

"Oh," Rosie said, "Good. I was worried."

"It's the best thing you'll ever do with your life. And _babies_ are _amazing_. It's my favorite age. They're so little and cute and _easy_."

"Easy?" Rosie exclaimed, "That's _really_ not what everyone else says."

"Yes, but that's because they're idiots. Babies have almost no actual problems, and the problems that they have are simple to solve. It's just feed clean cuddle repeat, which is time-consuming, but _easy_. The problems that they have when they're twenty-eight are much trickier. Though chicken congee can help."

"It's delicious," Rosie said. It really was, and now that the puking was done she was starving. "Thank you. How was China? I'm sorry you had to come back early on my account."

"Well, when you call your dad in the middle of the night and tell him that you need to come stay at home because you're pregnant and your boyfriend's maybe been abducted by guerillas there's really only one possible outcome of that conversation. It's fine. It's much more fun patronizing your elderly relatives than being the elderly relative and getting patronized. And everything's so _expensive_ there now, bloody new dragon economy. Which, speaking of-"

She went into the other room, and bought back a small onesie decorated with a smiling cartoon-

"Is that a rat?" Rosie asked.

"As in _year of the_ , yes. I saw it in the gift shop in the airport and I couldn't resist."

"Thank you. It's so… _tiny_."

"Yeah, none of my babies or grandbabies ever fit into the 'newborn' size. So I may have also got you the 0-3 and 3-6 months."

Rosie smiled, despite everything.

"I suppose I should start figuring out what I'm going to do, now that little rat's on the way."

She got the hell on with that.

She wrote the article on blowjobs, then another one reviewing the hot new mascaras. Then under her own name a longer-form piece about refugees from the ongoing war in the Balkans being lured to the UK under false pretenses and _de facto_ enslaved as domestic laborers. Janine believed a good woman's magazine should contain a carefully calibrated blend of beauty, sex, fashion, and stamping out injustice. Rosie sent out pitch letters to everyone she could think of and got generally good responses… apparently after doing it professionally for seven years, she finally had a good reputation as a reporter.

She started looking for a flat of her own, and was confronted by the fact that it was going to be absolutely impossible to find a place that was:

-In London

-Affordable

-Acceptable to raise a child in

Unless she was also willing to take:

-Currently on fire

When her stepmother heard about this, she said, eyes agleam with baby rabies, "Why don't you just move in here for good? We can clear out the spare room and then I can help look after him when you're working."

(Yes, him, they found that out quite early. The sixth grandchild was going to be the only boy born into the entire blended family since John himself. Everyone was chuffed about this and it only very occasionally freaked Rosie out.)

Rosie's dad raised an eyebrow and remarked, "Or we can help Rosie out with a down payment and leave midnight feedings to the correct generation."

Time passed. The baby started to kick. Then Sherlock Holmes came home from Romania. He had a tan, new adventures to relate that were probably only 50% exaggerated, and a very fetching grey scruff of a beard.

Really _very_ fetching. To the point where when he first arrived he smiled smugly, ran a finger under Molly's chin, then said, "Do close your mouth, Hooper, they all know we still fancy one another and there's no need to rub it in."

Most importantly, he had Alec. Alec, by contrast, was pallid, skinny, and shocky from imprisonment, but he was wonderfully, gloriously _alive._ He also was now EXTREMELY keen that he and Rosie should get married and settle down to raise the baby. Almost suspiciously so… Rosie quizzed Sherlock about it, and the detective raised his hands innocently and said, "I had nothing to do with it, Watson. Apparently you've not always been that encouraging of his romantic overtures and he didn't think you'd go for it, but now there's the baby to consider."

Very late at night, Rosie rewatched a video clip that she'd watched hundreds of times before. It was old, low-res 2D, and as always the face, so similar to her own, filled her with a unquantifiable sadness.

"I'm so sorry that I won't get to see you fall in love, my darling. I always thought of it as sort of a trap for women… which, that's about me and your Gran, and it doesn't matter, but it's why I didn't get married until I was forty. Because it's true, it really can be."

Across time and death, Mary Watson smiled.

"But it can also be the best thing that ever happens to you. So when you get to that point, if you get to that point… just use your good sense, okay? Be sure you're right, and then go at it with all your heart. You won't regret it."

So the next time Alec asked her to marry him, this time bringing along photos of the lovely spacious suitable-for-children flat that "I already own, for God's sake, why won't you just say yes," Rosie said yes.

The wedding was held at the Langham hotel, since Alec's family were of _that class_ of people. Like most of Rosie's expensive milestones, it was paid for by Sherlock in his capacity as the executor of her Nanny Martha's will. She'd wanted to assure Rosie always remembered her… which, no fear. Apart from the actual recollections Rosie had of her grandmother, the McLaren GT3 that Rosie had received when she first got her driving license tended to stick in the mind.

Sadly, her dad had exhaled through his nose, pointed out to Sherlock that the car would cost twenty thousand pounds a year to maintain, was not _technically_ road legal, and "She's bloody seventeen and already drives like a maniac, Sherlock, I swear to God _you_ are the reason my hair went grey," and made him take it back and get her a Mini Cooper instead.

Rosie wore cobalt blue silk to her wedding despite taking a surprising amount of flack for not doing the traditional white. _Ridiculous_ flack, given that her stepmother had to stay up all night to alter it to fit over her _eight-month pregnant belly_ after the baby decided to drop. Pantomiming virginity was absurd at this point. She "borrowed" her sister Emilia's star sapphire necklace, bought a "new" hairband, and for her "old" picked out a set of her mother's earrings that were more bohemian than her usual taste but paired well with the dress.

Without knowing it, she also had the identical thought that her mother had on her wedding day of, "What nonsense, I belong to _me_ ," and for that reason had her dad give a blessing but was definitely not given away by _anybody_.

The reception was a whirlwind. Rosie had never been told she was beautiful so often in her life, despite her being enormous, puffy, and exhausted. About an hour in, she looked over to table five, where her family was clustered around Mycroft's… well, Mycroft's _something_ , nobody really knew what that relationship involved and the most either of them would ever cop to was 'colleague'... Lady Smallwood.

Sherlock was telling a story, and Janine was hitting him on the shoulder and calling him a liar while Molly tried not to laugh. Chief inspector Donovan was trying to lure Mycroft out for a dance, and Lady Alicia was pushing him to go.

All these women, and a few men, had helped raise her. Mostly they were not particularly maternal people… the exception to that was red eyed from lack of sleep and crying throughout the _entire_ ceremony, resting her head on John's shoulder and smiling. But Rosie had made it this far, and had spent her entire life surrounded by love.

Alec came up behind Rosie and put his arms around her. Inside her, the baby kicked. Rosie smiled. Maybe she did know something about being a mother after all.

Notes: "Rosie Real" is a line from "Really Rosie" by Carole King and Maurice Sendak. John used to sing it to her when she was a kid. There _are_ street-legal McLaren GT3s, but the one Sherlock picked out for Rosie was not one of them.


	6. The First Mrs Watson

I swear to God I wasn't ever obsessed with Mary Morstan. It's just that she seemed... _unusually_ present in my life, especially by the standards of people I'd never met who'd also been dead for half a decade.

The first time I really noticed her was the first time I tried to cook something in John and Rosie's kitchen. Both of them were down with a hard cold… though John, being a man, had upgraded his to "flu" and was happily occupied with looking for signs he was developing pneumonia. Bee and Emilia were camping out with us and playing Barbie dolls with Rosie. They always liked visiting his flat in Kentish Town, a part of London that's roughly a thousand times more fun than Woking when you're a teenager... though I noticed that both of them also still secretly enjoyed playing with Barbie dolls.

At that point John had cooked for _me_ before, a few times. He wasn't _bad_ at it, just limited to simple things like casseroles and steaks under the broiler. I was kind of surprised to see that he was doing all that basic stuff in a kitchen with probably five thousand pounds worth of professional grade _batterie de cuisine,_ all arranged in a completely incomprehensible fashion. I was on a fruitless quest for the tin opener when the thought came to me, "This place would only make sense if it was set up by someone who was very short, left-handed, and an incredibly serious cook."

Nobody had ever told me any of that, though the "very short" is obvious in photos. Handedness isn't ever something people care about, and while every woman is sort of expected to be Nigella Lawson in our copious spare time, nobody appreciates it, certainly not enough to mention it once you're dead. But right then I knew, down to my bones, that it was true. Once I realized that, I found the tin opener right away. Then I looked in the lowest drawer, furthest away from the stove, and was utterly unsurprised to find it was filled with tupperware, because _that's where you put it_ when you have a floor-crawler who you need to keep safely occupied while Mummy is cooking. It's terribly inconvenient at any other time in your life.

I fit roughly into that "spiritual-but-not-religious" category, but I do not believe in ghosts, full stop. All the same, a chill ran up my spine just as if she'd actually materialized and introduced herself.

She'd left marks on the world, and the kitchen she had shaped around her absence was only one of them. The wistfulness that always colored Molly's friendliness to me? That was about Mary. Sherlock Holmes' endless low-grade hostility? That too. The way Rosie soaked up every interaction with an adult woman like a little motherless sponge? That was _definitely_ about Mary.

John even still spoke to her from time to time, not that he knew I knew. I heard him doing it after a trip to the pier at Brighton had ended with Rosie throwing a very standard overtired-losing-of-shit-because-thwarted tantrum. John had really taken it to heart, for some reason, and later that night I woke up to hear him talking to nobody.

"Of all of the crap she could have inherited from me," he'd said, "It _would_ be the bloody temper, wouldn't it? _You_ weren't ever like that when you got angry."

We discussed this, sort of, once. His first book did very well in the UK, so well that he'd got an American agent who had done well enough with _her_ pitching work that the US publication rights actually went to auction. He and I stayed up late, drinking champagne, as the agent texted him updates from New York. It was already an absolutely remarkable amount of money, but John just kept getting more and more morose, and finally, I had to ask.

"Okay, fine," he snapped back at me, "Yeah, I'm bloody thinking about her. What's wrong with that, hmm? She always liked my writing, thought it was really good, and we never had _any_ goddamned money and it would have been _nice_ if I could have provided for her like this. So I'm thinking about her. So what?"

I didn't say much in response. We'd had a bottle and a half of champagne between us, and it felt like it could have escalated into something bad and I didn't want to go there. I very much didn't say, "But _I_ like your writing too" because I am not, in fact, pitiful.

Thought it, though.

Later that night he crept into bed with me and said quietly into my hair, "I'm sorry. Look… I mean, if Nick were still around, I wouldn't be here. And if I could get Mary back then I would, too. But that doesn't mean that what you and I have isn't real."

Of course I agreed with him, and we were happy again. But do you want to know a secret?

For me, it wasn't true.

I loved Nick, in all the ways you can, including the "oh gosh YES I'll happily cut out my own heart and serve it to you on a platter, sir, will there be anything else?" way that you can only really manage when you're twenty-four and wide-eyed and it's all new. And then he died.

Obviously an aortic dissection aged forty-five was not something Nick planned on, or something he did to hurt me. But it _had_ hurt me, in more ways than are immediately visible to the eye. People sometimes try and act like once you've gotten through grief and you're out on the other side you're somehow… better. Wiser, kinder, more understanding.

This is, politely, bullshit. A cracked plate can get glued back together but it's never the same, or as strong as it once was. He'd left me all alone with two children who needed their dad, no ability to pay the bills, a ruined set of dreams and a _whole_ new variety of delightful neuroses. The me who got out on the other side was so different from the me who had loved him that, if Nick _had_ come back to me, I really don't know what I would have done.

(Apart from,"AIEEE! Undead!" I suppose.)

No, by this point, John was _it_ for me. And it's _bitter_ to feel like that about someone and know that it's not _quite_ the same way for them. That you come in second place to a memory.

Anyway. We dated, for about a year and a half during which I _occasionally_ felt like Max De Winter's poor unnamed second wife in "Rebecca" but not by any means most of the time.

Proposals of marriage are never a surprise, but John was unusually unsubtle about it. Even Emilia and Bee noticed what he was planning, and they sat me down for a solemn family conference to discuss what they thought I should do about it. They liked him, they thought he seemed like a good potential stepfather, but they both agreed that I needed to focus more on what would make me happy than on anything else, and they would support me in whatever decision I felt was best. I hadn't realized that they had gotten to the age where they felt like they had to look after _me_ and I wondered when that had happened.

The two of us went for a walk, and John began with, "So I had a word with Miss Rosamund last night."

"Did you?" I replied demurely.

"Yep. And we've both agreed that you, and your daughters, should come and live in our flat with us and stay forever and ever."

"I _see_."

"What that's going to look like can be up to you, I suppose," he continued, "We can get married, if you like. That's Rosie's vote, she's very keen on the idea of being a bridesmaid. Or if you'd rather we can be one of those bold modern young couples and just shack up. But the forever and ever part _is_ obligatory, I'm afraid."

I chuckled and squeezed his hand, and said, "I _do_ want to say yes, John. But I'm going to think about it for a few days. Just to be sure."

Then when I left for home that evening I stole something out of the top drawer of his desk.

I was _not_ snooping when I'd originally found it. I'd asked John if I could borrow a stamp and he'd told me where to find them… and they were right next to three DVDs in their plastic jewel boxes. The titles were:

Miss me?

Miss you.

For my daughter.

That night I helped myself to the middle one. I knew _roughly_ what was in it… John had explained to me, haltingly, the story of his first brief marriage and its horrific ending. But I wanted to know, for myself, the memory I'd be living with… which was surprisingly difficult. DVDs had already become kind of retrotech so I had to dig the portable USB-adapted player out of the closet and download new device drivers and everything. But eventually, a face appeared on the screen of my laptop.

In photographs, Mary always was carefully made up and looked happy and pretty, occasionally verging on beautiful. Clean-scrubbed, she looked tired and ill, and the lines in her face were clearly delineated. When this video was made I had been younger than her… but I'd caught her up since, and she would always be my junior now.

"Hi, John," Mary said, adjusting the camera on a shelf, "I hope… I _think_ , that you're never going to see this tape. I'll _solve_ this and call it back, because I've been in far worse spots than this and come through just fine. Ajay's… Ajay was my friend, and I think I can talk him down. And if it comes to the worst-"

She sighed, and looked away from the camera and down at the ground.

"If it comes to the worst, he's good, I'm better. But I still have this awful premonition of disaster... like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff. I can't quite picture the future any longer. So in the event-"

Mary looked straight into the lens, and continued, "This is what you need to know if I die."

I really didn't go into this video expecting to like Mary and sure enough, I _really_ didn't. The woman had ice water instead of blood.

Which is not to say it wasn't extremely interesting. After calmly telling John how she'd kill her ex if necessary (and yes, when she said "friend" she meant "lover," any woman could tell that though I don't know if John ever realized), she went on to discuss a lot of fascinating spy stuff. Mary thought that John and Rosie would be safe if she were known to be dead, but just in case she gave the contact information of an extremely important man at the CIA who was apparently also her stepfather, and of an extremely important woman who I had _thought_ was Mycroft Holmes' girlfriend but was apparently his boss. She gave a list of REALLY important people who had employed her and exactly why they had done that and brief assessments of which might be approachable for…

Blackmail? Protection? I realized that John, and his friends, all speak in a sort of code about these things which I really don't have the key to, and it gave me the shivers.

Mary sighed, and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"I've made another one of these for Rosie. It'll be turning up in a few days, so don't be shocked. It's _long, tons_ of clips, I ran out of space on the DVD. You can watch it with her, I mean obviously you'll have to until she's big enough to work the player by herself-"

And right then, Mary Watson's face crumpled and her tears started falling and I _bloody_ started sympathizing with her.

Rosie hadn't even been one when this video was recorded. It had to have been _so_ hard for a mother, any mother, even old ice-water Morstan, to walk away from a baby that young and not know when or even if you could come back for her. And then, of course, she had walked on into death and known that she could never come back at all.

Sometimes I _hate_ that I am such a flipping soft touch.

Mary, crying but not sobbing, then went over a lengthy list of the little hopes and dreams that she had for Rosie, and I couldn't help but notice that John had assiduously carried out Every. Single. One.

"I'd like her to always have a pet to love."

They had _two_ , Mary's elderly cat Calton who lived on top of the refrigerator, and Peanuts, the dumbest beagle in the universe, who slept in Rosie's bed and waited for her to come home from school every day.

"As soon as she can, I want Rosie to learn to swim. It's just- look, people just don't realize how important water safety is for children."

There was a story behind that one, I could tell. But now, Rosie swam like a mermaid.

"I'd like her to learn a foreign language while she's still young. She's so smart, I bet she'll pick it up right away, and it gives you so much more freedom to navigate the world on your own terms."

Until that instant I had honestly assumed that "Well, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Rosie and I speak Spanish at home," was just another example of tiger mothering perpetrated by an over-anxious British dad.

" _Show her the world-"_

She obviously decided to take the name "Rosamund" as instructions later in life, but even way back then Rosie had more stamps in her passport than I did.

Eventually Mary's silent tears dried up, and she blotted her face with the pads of her fingers. "When she's old enough, I want you to tell her about me. Or as much about me as you know, anyway, I wish you had just read that _goddamned_ flash drive. Rosie's half me, and half you, and that's one hell of a genetic legacy to be getting on with. If she knows the truth then… then maybe she can be better than me, than either of us. She can make better choices, do better things with her life."

Mary took a shuddery breath.

"The DVD I made for her was nowhere close to long enough. You'll have to tell Rosie everything I ever wanted to say to her. That's your job, John Watson. Your sacred quest. Don't let me down."

Mary smiled, and the weight seemed to fall off her shoulders.

"I know you won't. _God_ , I do love you. I didn't ever expect that, you know. I thought Act Two would just be sort of quiet and peaceful and drab, and then you turned up out of nowhere and it was the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. Remember that, even if you forget everything else. You made me _so_ happy. If you're watching this, I'm sorry this is how it had to end for us. And I hope you'll be as happy as you made me, someday."

Mary chuckled softly, and said, squinting at the camera, "I guess that's really it. Apparently everything really important in a whole life can be summed up in a… twenty two minute video."

Her brow furrowed in thought, then her eyes widened, "But there _is_ one more thing. I _did_ send one of these to Sherlock. Just in case you need some extra help, afterwards. I hope he took it in the sense it was intended, but if not, get him in for this last bit."

Mary Watson leaned forward on her elbows, and began, "P.S. I know you two; and if I'm gone, I know what you could become-" but really, from my point of view, the interesting bits had come to an end.

The place I went to next morning was in North London, not too far from John and Rosie's flat. I accidentally got off at the wrong stop and had to walk straight uphill for about a half a mile, which oddly worked out, because I passed a florist's on the way. I picked up a little arrangement of gerbera daisies. Being cheap and colorful, you get them a lot once you're a mum, and I thought they'd be appreciated.

The cemetery was a park-within-a-park, a little island of greenery in the sea of the city. I asked the sexton for directions, and found her small stone on a hilly bit. It was low and simple grey granite, carved with:

 _Mary Elizabeth Morstan Watson_

 _1972-2015_

 _Beloved wife, mother, and friend_

Or, line by line, a game of two lies and a truth.

I sat down on the grassy plot, and arranged the daisies in the little inset flower-holder. Lord, this felt awkward. But sometimes you do need to say things out loud.

"Hi, Mary. I'm Gemma. I'm dating John. He's asked me to marry him, and I'm going to say yes."

Yep, deeply awkward. I sighed. At least nobody was nearby to hear.

"People keep saying you and I would have been friends, which- I honestly don't know. John definitely has a type, but even apart from the "I'm sleeping with your husband" bit I think that you and I were too different. He… hell, all of them… they're an extraordinary set of people, aren't they? And it sounds like you were extraordinary too. Mycroft Holmes says that you were the third best covert operative of your generation, which I'm pretty sure he _intended_ to be complimentary. Sherlock's fourteenth. I don't know why he feels the need to keep a list like that but there you go."

I sighed again, and continued on, "I'm _not_ extraordinary, really at all. I'm very average. But I _am_ nice, intelligent, good-looking and age appropriate, if that means anything to you. And I'll love them and look after them just as much as you would. I hope that you're at peace about it."

"Mind you," I said after thinking about it, "If you _aren't_ at peace about it, tough. I'm still going to do it anyway."

Like I said, I don't believe in ghosts, but right then I almost felt the echo of a laugh. I left the cemetery feeling like we understood one another.

That evening the girls and I went to dinner at the flat in Kentish Town, where I popped the DVD back in the desk drawer and never mentioned it, from that day to this. There's no percentage in telling a man _every_ damnfool insecurity you have about him.

John was cooking in Mary's beautiful kitchen, and I poured a glass of wine and sat on the countertop.

"All right, John Watson," I said, "I'll have you."

He smiled sunnily at me, and it was a happy a moment as I can remember.

"We'll get married, I think. Set the example of matrimony in the parish and all that. But we'll do it very simply… or as simply as you can with three bridesmaids, anyway. And I'm keeping my name."

He frowned at that, and asked, "Any reason why?"

"I don't want the girls feeling like I'm abandoning _our_ family for a _man_. I'd hyphenate again, but…"

"Yeah, Huang-Wyatt-Watson would be kind of a mouthful," he shrugged, "It's fine. It's a bit old fashioned anyway… I'm pretty sure the only reason Mary bothered was it added another layer of secret identity."

"Oh, I don't know," I mused, as he came up to me and put his arms around my waist, "I suspect that being Mrs. Watson is quite a good life."


End file.
